Good ways to get members for your game?

[Jimbo]

I've ran a couple games before but the main problem I have ever had was getting new members. I've purchased advertisement before from sites like apexwebgaming and some other places, but it never seemed to work. Maybe its just the plans I bought because I know if you want tons of members you've got to pay a lot for advertisement.

But right now being on a strict budget what are some ways to get members to visit my site? What are some of your strategies.

Please don't say advertise on other peoples games. I hate when people do that to my games and don't like doing it to other people either :P

Thanks

[KyleMassacre]

Social media would probably be a great place to go since a huge population of people have a facebook and Twitter. Getting a few members isn't so hard, the hard part is keeping the members you have. If you have some solid members then they usually like to play with their friends so they will invite them over to play so offer a reward for invites.

I think the trick is to keep your game interesting for your old and new players and some things that kill it is:

A bad balance

Too easy

Too hard

If it's too easy for your players then new players may get discouraged by being too far behind and creating a bad balance between your game economics where players have so much money they can have everything they want and the newbies feel like they can't catch up.

If if it's too hard then the first players feel like they can't advance through your game and they loose interest.

If you can tackle these issues then getting players shouldn't be so difficult.

[Jimbo]

Yes I agree. I work on getting the best balance so new users can still have fun. I am still working on getting the facebook rolling maybe I will also look into making a twitter account.

Thanks for your input.

[peterisgb]

Regular updates (tweaks) and/or competition on a regular basis does wonders to. users knowing they have a chance of winning something every week or so is a good incentive.

[Jimbo]

I usually like to add an update every couple days unless its something big, and think about what I am adding to make sure it wont drive members away. I haven't done much competitions aside from referral competitions. You mean like leveling competitions say like first to level 50 gets something? Something along those guidelines.

It would be awesome to get the game really going to be able to have cash prizes.

Thanks for the input.

[KyleMassacre]

I usually like to add an update every couple days unless its something big, and think about what I am adding to make sure it wont drive members away. I haven't done much competitions aside from referral competitions. You mean like leveling competitions say like first to level 50 gets something? Something along those guidelines.

It would be awesome to get the game really going to be able to have cash prizes.

Thanks for the input.

I think this is where games usually fail, they promote people not to follow the way games are meant to be played. Leveling shouldn't be a real competition nor gaining the most stats. You need to set your game apart from other games. Most games do stuff like this and their life span is merely months.

What will get and keep members is gameplay. I know I'm a broken record if you have followed countless threads here where a story line is key. If you have "crimes", use them to help tell your story. Set up missions to complete and use those for competitions, set up collectables and when someone completes a set reward them for it, make weapons, armor, etc level based where they have to be a certain level to use them.

[Coly010]

I think this is where games usually fail, they promote people not to follow the way games are meant to be played. Leveling shouldn't be a real competition nor gaining the most stats. You need to set your game apart from other games. Most games do stuff like this and their life span is merely months.

What will get and keep members is gameplay. I know I'm a broken record if you have followed countless threads here where a story line is key. If you have "crimes", use them to help tell your story. Set up missions to complete and use those for competitions, set up collectables and when someone completes a set reward them for it, make weapons, armor, etc level based where they have to be a certain level to use them.

Gonna reiterate this point. A game, text based or not, is a game. What makes you play a console game? Things like CoD or Halo? Its the gameplay. If the gameplay in those games wasn't up to scratch they wouldnt be major titles in teh gaming industry.

Same goes for a text based game. You need to give your users something that they can enjoy playing, something that isnt just the same thing that they are always playing.

For me, this is where a storyline comes in so well. You set up a story, you give users a bit of background on it and then you let them play through the story. make it as complex as you want, but for me personally, even just having standard Mccodes Crimes changed to suit your storyline wont be enough.

A proper questing/campaign system, although difficult and time consuming can be the difference in your game being a major success and or it failing.

Put the time and effort into it. Set it up so that you can expand the storyline easily enough from an admin panel. Prepare expansions and then that gives users something to look forward to.

If your storyline features factions of some kind, let users choose which side they want to be on, and incorporate that into your game play.

You can also think about adding easter eggs into your game, "hidden" things that can be found, and doing so will reward the user with something whether its items or a title or recognition. Make them level specific if you have to so that users can't just do them from day one.

That's my thoughts anyway.

[KyleMassacre]

That's exactly what I wanted to write but didn't feel like it haha. I had COD, Halo and others in my mind the whole time. Even on COD, people are rushing to prestige and rank up but why? To get the status but still they are accomplishing what the game is about.

[Coly010]

That's exactly what I wanted to write but didn't feel like it haha. I had COD, Halo and others in my mind the whole time. Even on COD, people are rushing to prestige and rank up but why? To get the status but still they are accomplishing what the game is about.

Yeah well I've gone through some of my posts and realised I need to start doing something to improve my reputation to match my skillset. Back when I first joined this forum I was a complete noob around 13 years old when it came to coding/design/text based games , but I've learnt so much since then and I'm trying to convey that I have improved /: so I'm putting the time and effort into all of my posts to try and give advice in an understandable way.

People rush to prestige for the status and the leaderboards, you get players that enjoy doing that so you can have those features in your game to suit those players but I wouldn't force these features on all members